Google Cloud Platform Moving to GitHub in Boon for Developers

Google is moving its Google Cloud Platform (GCP) over to the GitHub collaborative development environment to make it easier for software developers to contribute and continue the evolution of GCP.

Julia Ferraioli, developer advocate for the Google Compute Engine, announced the transition in a Jan. 22 post on the Google Developers Blog.

"Today, we're announcing that you can now find [GCP] on GitHub," wrote Ferraioli. "The GitHub organization for the Google Cloud Platform is your destination for samples and tools relating to App Engine, BigQuery, Compute Engine, Cloud SQL and Cloud Storage."

Most GCP open source tools will be transferred to the organization over time, according to Ferraioli.

"You can quickly get your app running by forking any of our repositories and diving into the code," she wrote.

So far, "the GitHub organization for [GCP] has 36 public repositories, some of which are currently undergoing their initial code reviews," Ferraioli wrote. "The [GCP] Developer Relations Team will be using GitHub to maintain our starter projects, which show how to get started with our APIs using different stacks."

GoogWe will continue to add repositories that illustrate products such as the classic guest book app on Google App Engine. For good measure, you will also see some tools that will make your life easier, such as an OAuth 2.0 helper."

The move to GitHub is meant to make it easier for project developers to have a one-stop resource to do their work, wrote Ferraioli.

"We set up this organization not only to give you an easy way to find and follow our samples, but also to give you a way to get involved and start hacking alongside us," she wrote. "We'll be monitoring our repositories for any reported issues as well as for pull requests. If you're interested in seeing what a code review looks like for Google's open source code, you can follow along with the discussion happening right on the commits."

For developers, the GitHub site is an easy way to keep track of their work and progress, she wrote. "From getting started with Python on Google Cloud Storage to monitoring your Google Compute Engine instances with App Engine, our GitHub organization is home to it all."

The GCP program has been experiencing lots of growth lately. In July 2012, Google unveiled a new partner program to help business clients discover all of Google's available cloud services.

The new GCP Partner Program, unveiled July 24, 2012, enables service and technology partners to work with Google to provide services for and extend the functionality of Google's cloud platform suite of products. The service partners will provide consulting and implementation services for GCP products, such as Google App Engine, Google Compute Engine, BigQuery and Google Cloud Storage.

Google announced the program in a blog post that aims to show potential customers how they can take advantage of the same huge infrastructure that powers the search company.

The creation of the partner program also marks another big step for Google as it seeks new revenue streams beyond advertising and search. It also puts Google on the same footing as Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Microsoft, which have long-established partner programs for their various services.

GitHub is a rapidly growing collaborative software development platform and the leader in public and private code sharing and hosting. GitHub is a Web-based hosting service for software development projects that use the Git revision control system. GitHub offers both paid plans for private repositories, and free accounts for open-source projects. GitHub is the most popular Git hosting site and the most popular open-source hosting site. In less than five years, GitHub has become the world's largest and most trusted code sharing and hosting community with more than 1.7 million users and more than 3 million Git repositories. GitHub's highly collaborative environment, which includes GitHub.com, desktop and mobile apps, and GitHub Enterprise, enables developers and companies across a broad spectrum.